Software as a service

How an Outlook SharePoint Plugin Can Increase Productivity

Productivity is a magic word, it seems everyone is striving for more of it; managers dream of finding a way to increase the productivity of their team, and most of us wish we could be more productive with our time. The truth is we may be missing some easy opportunities to increase our productivity across our day.

One way to increase productivity is to streamline our processes. By that I mean, the everyday tasks that take up time and prevent us focusing on more important work. For example, searching for information.

You know the feeling, you’re sure you got sent that document in an email last week, but it takes ten minutes to find it. By the end of that search, you’re completely distracted from the task you were working on. In fact, to make matters worse, it can take more than 25 minutes, on average, to resume a task after a distraction (Source: The Wall Street Journal). The result is wasted time and lost productivity. That’s where investing in an Outlook plugin for SharePoint can really help.

Keep it simple.

Humans are simple creatures. If something is too complicated, the chances are we’ll give up, or avoid, doing it. We fall back on the simple option every time. Even when the simple option creates more work for us in the long run.

That’s why, when you can’t find that document that your colleague sent you, it’s easy to simply ask them to resend it. You may feel like you’re saving time, but this option is just multiplying the problem.

One of the most used productivity tools in any business is email. It is also commonly used to share information. But if you’re not careful, it can also turn into a huge data silo. An Outlook SharePoint plugin allows you to integrate your email system with your document management and storage system. This means you can drag and drop files straight from Outlook to SharePoint and makes it easy to find them and share them again later.

Available when you need it.

Identifying how you work is important if you want to increase your productivity. For example, if you work from home, or travel a lot for work it’s not practical to rely on in-house document storage systems. And that’s not mentioning the scourge of the traveller, bad Wi-Fi signal.

Obviously accessing your files wherever you are working is vital. And many of us are guilty of copying those files on our desktop, or USB storage perpetuating the chaos of managing and finding information later. With an Outlook SharePoint plugin, you can benefit from built-in offline capability. This means you can still access your files easily, wherever you are and you’re not at risk of breaching information governance policy in the process.

Make it easier to apply policy.

Speaking of policy. One of the biggest benefits of implementing SharePoint in your organisation is increased accessibility to your information. But in many organisations, there is some confusion about when to apply information governance rules. In most cases, these need to be applied when a document is created or an email is sent or received.

With an Outlook SharePoint plugin, you can automatically apply relevant governance settings based on pre-set parameters. This means you don’t have to worry about making sure you have tagged and stored documents correctly. But your organisation has the added security of maintaining control of all information for audit and compliance purposes. A win, win situation.

Overall, there are many ways to increase your productivity at work. But one way to make your life easier is to consider implementing an Outlook SharePoint plugin. A recent survey by Sharp discovered that 63% of UK office workers feel negatively about their workplace, with 35% blaming outdated ways of working.

Imagine an innovative tool that could support your business to break down data silos and become more collaborative and productive. Now, imagine that tool being able to seamlessly plug-in to the software that you already use and trust, making user adoption a piece of cake.